MG, I cannot argue with you about hearing music. Dead on accurate in my opinion. But for those who are listening to recorded music rather than playing it, don’t necessarily need that expanded range beyond 96dB. But having a hearing aid that is capable of beyond 6KHz is beneficial. Some hearing aids do not allow for this mainly due to power/feedback restrictions.

Have you been able to get this extended range with any hearing aid you have used in the past? Have you tried those two hearing aids you mentioned?

If you have tried the Super 440, I would love to read your review about it.

Have you been able to get this extended range with any hearing aid you have used in the past? Have you tried those two hearing aids you mentioned?

If you have tried the Super 440, I would love to read your review about it.

AFAIK, only the K-AMP had an extended frequency range in the pre-digital past, but it never was suitable for at least moderate or severe losses. Even now, its digital sucessor, DigiK, is not very relatively powerful in any current implementation and some users say it is nowhere comparable to the K-AMP.

I have not tried either aid, as I’m at the super level now. It is possible that with a full shell soft mold instead of a power RITE, the fitting range could be increased. Likewise with a super power RITE. But I suspect the RITE configuration contributes a lot to the increased frequency range.

I stand corrected in confusing 96db of dynamic range with SPL. To be clear, the peak input limitation of an aid’s 16-bit (96db) ADC is what I was referring to. I see that brought up as an issue for listening to live music which can peak to 120db or more, but surely amplifying a CD’s output could do likewise? I do not think the CD’s output level per se is limited to 96db, just its dynamic range. The analogy I was tryng to make was between, say Metallica’s Death Magnetic, with its absurd album’s dynamic range compression rating of 3 (average of 3db from lowest to highest sounds) and digital WDRC (fitting to say, a 30db range of remaining hearing).

Ok I think I can chime in here. I discovered this thread a few days ago during a Google search and was surprised to see a few people with similar levels of loss with the same complaints about digital hearing aids. First off, here is the model of hearing aid I’m using, which is my most recent:

Unitron 360e
Super power digital 675 battery
Has been programmed to my loss
Filter has been taken out of the tubing
All automatic features of hearing aid have been disabled
Hearing aid programmed to sound more like analog
The volume is turned up 2 notches all the time to compensate for digital compression.

First, a background of my hearing loss. I am 32. I am totally deaf in my left ear with my right severe - profound and have used analog my whole life since I was 3 years old (when I first lost my hearing). I’ve only recently switched to digital at around 23. I’ve been using my analog hearing aid backup (a Unitron US80-PP analog) over the past several days because I need to prepare for a presentation where there will be people far away asking questions. I need my hearing aid to be able to pick up the sound information this far away. My digital is woefully inadequate for accomplishing this. Not to say it doesn’t pick up that info, it does - but it doesn’t pick up ENOUGH sound information for me to understand speakers that far away entirely. There is also a significant difference in sound quality between the two.

The digital - everything is “quiet”. Sounds arrive at exactly the same time, and it’s difficult to perceive loudness and softness in sounds and I have often been told to “be quiet” by my parents when I speak. To me I sound like I am talking normally but to my parent(s) I’m talking way too loud with my digital. With my analog, there is no difficulty in perceiving softness to loudness. I am talking “way quieter” with it. Music is significantly better with analog. I’m able to tell pitch and tone significantly better than I could with my digital hearing aid. With the digital, due to the quiet signal, quite a bit of sound detail is missing when listening to music. In my car when I listen to music with my digital I have to turn the volume up to 50% full volume and sometimes up to 70%. There is almost no background noise. With my analog I only have to turn up the volume to the first 3 notches (way less than 25%) in order to hear everything just fine. And, I can tell the softer songs between the louder songs much easier. Since I play piano and learning how to play guitar I can tell there is a higher quality of music coming through my analog. It was not like this even with the music program on my digital. Discrimination of notes and melodies is also way easier with my analog.

All in all digital clarity when it comes to speaking voices is great, but the compression results in a sacrifice of too much sound information when the sound information should be there to help aid in increasing discrimination in a number of other situations than just speaking. I noticed the difference at a meeting the other day at work. The phone speaker which is normally difficult to understand actually sounded like a phone speaker - with sound detail from the other voices speaking being passed through the speaker and everything - it was also louder. I had no trouble following the conversation, whereas I feel with my digital that I usually miss some things during the meeting. Another minor thing I noticed: when going from an echoey environment into a non-echoey environment there is a distinct change in atmospheric sound when walking from one environment to the other. This relatively minor environmental detail was totally absent when using my digital.

Hopefully this helps. I will be able to add more detail as I experience more and different situations with my analog. I should mention that I have been using digital since I was around 23. I am 32.

Hopefully this helps. I will be able to add more detail as I experience more and different situations with my analog. I should mention that I have been using digital since I was around 23. I am 32.

I think you’re fortunate in that you’re only severe-profound, because the recruitment issues with being solely profound appears to make linear amplification very difficult to live with (at least in my case). Have you tried a compression ratio of 1.0 (off) on all the bands?

Since my hearing is now so poor, so far I have not noticed any major differences in fidelity between analog, digital linear amp and digital WDRC, other than the “loudness dampening” effect of the latter, which is a welcome relief. They all sound equally flat and boomy. I can not comprehend music [recorded], pitch and tonal differences, or any of the other effects you’ve mentioned. Live voices are about the only thing that stands out (though still distorted and more a distraction than a help). I too have noticed more atmospheric disturbance sensitivity with the digital that is really annoying.

Re: my previous rant, I want to acknowledge that my perception of being profound now vs severe before, is not fair at all to the many technological advancements that have occured in the non-profound space.

I saw from another forum that a wearer considers the Oticon Agil to be as “natural sounding” as the SeboTek 720, which is a pretty high bar to jump over. Can anyone in the know explain what these two expensive, high end, premium aids are doing vastly differently than the rest of the bunch?

Ok I think I can chime in here. I discovered this thread a few days ago during a Google search and was surprised to see a few people with similar levels of loss with the same complaints about digital hearing aids. First off, here is the model of hearing aid I’m using, which is my most recent:

Unitron 360e
Super power digital 675 battery
Has been programmed to my loss
Filter has been taken out of the tubing
All automatic features of hearing aid have been disabledHearing aid programmed to sound more like analog
The volume is turned up 2 notches all the time to compensate for digital compression.

First, a background of my hearing loss. I am 32. I am totally deaf in my left ear with my right severe - profound and have used analog my whole life since I was 3 years old (when I first lost my hearing). I’ve only recently switched to digital at around 23. I’ve been using my analog hearing aid backup (a Unitron US80-PP analog) over the past several days because I need to prepare for a presentation where there will be people far away asking questions. I need my hearing aid to be able to pick up the sound information this far away. My digital is woefully inadequate for accomplishing this. Not to say it doesn’t pick up that info, it does - but it doesn’t pick up ENOUGH sound information for me to understand speakers that far away entirely. There is also a significant difference in sound quality between the two.

The digital - everything is “quiet”. Sounds arrive at exactly the same time, and it’s difficult to perceive loudness and softness in sounds and I have often been told to “be quiet” by my parents when I speak. To me I sound like I am talking normally but to my parent(s) I’m talking way too loud with my digital. With my analog, there is no difficulty in perceiving softness to loudness. I am talking “way quieter” with it. Music is significantly better with analog. I’m able to tell pitch and tone significantly better than I could with my digital hearing aid. With the digital, due to the quiet signal, quite a bit of sound detail is missing when listening to music. In my car when I listen to music with my digital I have to turn the volume up to 50% full volume and sometimes up to 70%. There is almost no background noise. With my analog I only have to turn up the volume to the first 3 notches (way less than 25%) in order to hear everything just fine. And, I can tell the softer songs between the louder songs much easier. Since I play piano and learning how to play guitar I can tell there is a higher quality of music coming through my analog. It was not like this even with the music program on my digital. Discrimination of notes and melodies is also way easier with my analog.

All in all digital clarity when it comes to speaking voices is great, but the compression results in a sacrifice of too much sound information when the sound information should be there to help aid in increasing discrimination in a number of other situations than just speaking. I noticed the difference at a meeting the other day at work. The phone speaker which is normally difficult to understand actually sounded like a phone speaker - with sound detail from the other voices speaking being passed through the speaker and everything - it was also louder. I had no trouble following the conversation, whereas I feel with my digital that I usually miss some things during the meeting. Another minor thing I noticed: when going from an echoey environment into a non-echoey environment there is a distinct change in atmospheric sound when walking from one environment to the other. This relatively minor environmental detail was totally absent when using my digital.

Hopefully this helps. I will be able to add more detail as I experience more and different situations with my analog. I should mention that I have been using digital since I was around 23. I am 32.

BlastedDigitals, thank you for sharing.

I am very familiar with the Unitron 360e hearing aid. It sounds like you have them set up almost to where you need them, but they could use some tweaking.
There are two settings that can be used in the 360’s. Linear Limiting, and WDRC (wide dynamic range compression). For a loss like yours, as well as your experience with analog tech, I would always set the hearing aid up for Linear Limiting.

Then, if I had access to your old hearing aid, I would set the 360 so that they sounded similar to your US-80PP, then work towards a potentially better sound.

Your current settings are probably set as WDRC (this is the default setting) and so your compression settings are most likely what is causing this confusion in sound perception. More volume increases the noise levels but does little for speech perception.

My advice to you is go have your settings changed to Linear Limiting, and adjust the overall volume to your perfered settings with respect to clarity and volume, and have a nice range through your volume control so that you can have some control. This should solve a good majority of your issues.

I think you’re fortunate in that you’re only severe-profound, because the recruitment issues with being solely profound appears to make linear amplification very difficult to live with (at least in my case). Have you tried a compression ratio of 1.0 (off) on all the bands?

Since my hearing is now so poor, so far I have not noticed any major differences in fidelity between analog, digital linear amp and digital WDRC, other than the “loudness dampening” effect of the latter, which is a welcome relief. They all sound equally flat and boomy. I can not comprehend music [recorded], pitch and tonal differences, or any of the other effects you’ve mentioned. Live voices are about the only thing that stands out (though still distorted and more a distraction than a help). I too have noticed more atmospheric disturbance sensitivity with the digital that is really annoying.

Re: my previous rant, I want to acknowledge that my perception of being profound now vs severe before, is not fair at all to the many technological advancements that have occured in the non-profound space.

I saw from another forum that a wearer considers the Oticon Agil to be as “natural sounding” as the SeboTek 720, which is a pretty high bar to jump over. Can anyone in the know explain what these two expensive, high end, premium aids are doing vastly differently than the rest of the bunch?

MG

MG, I don’t know anything about the SeboTek, but the Oticon Agil line uses a linear and wdrc settings all built into one package. So you get the best possible sound quality (linear) when things are quiet to average sound levels, and then it applies compression (wdrc) as things progressively get louder to maximize comfort while still enabling audibility.

Sadly, with your hearing loss, I don’t believe you will be able to benefit from this technology in the Agil line. However something may be possible with the Oticon Chili SP7 or SP9. If you have these hearing aids tuned for your loss, you may be able to take advantage of similar technology found in the Agil’s.

MG, I don’t know anything about the SeboTek, but the Oticon Agil line uses a linear and wdrc settings all built into one package. So you get the best possible sound quality (linear) when things are quiet to average sound levels, and then it applies compression (wdrc) as things progressively get louder to maximize comfort while still enabling audibility.

Sadly, with your hearing loss, I don’t believe you will be able to benefit from this technology in the Agil line. However something may be possible with the Oticon Chili SP7 or SP9. If you have these hearing aids tuned for your loss, you may be able to take advantage of similar technology found in the Agil’s.

That’s very interesting. If you look at the output graphs of the Sebo HD and Agil, they have a relatively flat response up until 1kHz or so. This reminds me of one of Villchur’s papers where he stated the normal human ear has a flat frequency response up until the 2700Hz bump of the ear canal and that hearing aids should replicate this for a more natural sound.

Also, I didn’t notice this before, but the Sebo HD 16 is actually a 20-bit analog-to-digital conversion (120dB dynamic range) with a 32kHz sampling rate, in addition to the wide 14kHz frequency range. Not quite the sampling interval of CD’s/DVD’s, but it should have no peak input limiting issues. It also has 111 channels to do its mojo on. I can’t imagine why anyone at the non-profound level would not choose this aid over anything else currently on the market (I have no idea of the cost).

Sadly, even the Oticon Chili is not powerful enough. Out of everything I’ve researched so far, the only super/ultra power aid that stands out (hardware wise) from the pack at this time is Sonic Innovation’s Endura 12 as it has a frequency range of 100-6000, similar to the Oticon Chili and Widex Super 440.

Question: Would not setting the compression ratio to 1.0 only on <= 1kHz bands help replicate the dual linear/WDRC feature of the Agil?

I am very familiar with the Unitron 360e hearing aid. It sounds like you have them set up almost to where you need them, but they could use some tweaking.
There are two settings that can be used in the 360’s. Linear Limiting, and WDRC (wide dynamic range compression). For a loss like yours, as well as your experience with analog tech, I would always set the hearing aid up for Linear Limiting.

Then, if I had access to your old hearing aid, I would set the 360 so that they sounded similar to your US-80PP, then work towards a potentially better sound.

Your current settings are probably set as WDRC (this is the default setting) and so your compression settings are most likely what is causing this confusion in sound perception. More volume increases the noise levels but does little for speech perception.

My advice to you is go have your settings changed to Linear Limiting, and adjust the overall volume to your perfered settings with respect to clarity and volume, and have a nice range through your volume control so that you can have some control. This should solve a good majority of your issues.

I hope that helps.

Thank you so much HAH! Will these settings help with music? I went to karaoke using my analog HA tonight and I could tell the difference in sound quality, naturalness, and tonality immediately. I could keep on key and on pitch with the songs without issues (unless I didn’t remember particular portions of the melodies). With my digital, it’s worthless (even in music mode) and I find myself sounding very very bad on recordings.

Thank you so much HAH! Will these settings help with music? I went to karaoke using my analog HA tonight and I could tell the difference in sound quality, naturalness, and tonality immediately. I could keep on key and on pitch with the songs without issues (unless I didn’t remember particular portions of the melodies). With my digital, it’s worthless (even in music mode) and I find myself sounding very very bad on recordings.

If done correctly, yes, it will help with music, speech, environmental sounds, proximity detection and all sorts of other hearing perception issues you are currently having with your digital hearing aids.

As a hearing instrument practitioner, I hear people telling me how they like the sound of the analogs better, amongst many other things.

I am doing a study about the specific reasons why people liked their analog hearing aids better. The purpose is to determine if anything can be done with digitals that isn’t being done currently.

So, if you have any experience with the transition from analog to digital, or if you tried digital and went back to your analog, I want to know what you have to say.

I look forward to reading the responses in this forum.

HearingAidHelper

OOHHHH…

I never dreamed that such a person would bother to ask us why we’re not buying digital hearing aids, right here on a hearing aid forum. That has created the red-hot neon elephant that nobody can possibly miss - you’d have to be dead to miss it!

It is very simple. Have you ever tried any of these things on in a test? Do have ANY idea how horrible they sound? Especially the power aid category for 110dB-plus losses?

This is what I suspect… Digitals in the power aid category have been foisted upon the unsuspecting public who have no idea of what things are supposed to sound like, for money, and because the makers simply want to play with digital technology for the sake of digital technology without regard for sound quality.

I know so because while I am in the profoundly deaf category, and have been since a baby, my auditory cortex is very highly developed. I am a musician. I know what a bass guitar amplifier is supposed to sound like because I can hear it unaided (this is the part of my hearing curve that is least affected by my loss, testing about 75 dB at 125 Hz and possibly down to 65-70 dB at 60 and 32 Hz (we would be feeling the fundamentals at this point)), and I have stood in front of amps at work concerts loud enough to hear the amplifiers to the point that I can confirm that yes, the analogs are pretty much playing back what I hear coming through the amps unaided. SO I KNOW THAT DIGITALS ARE NOT SUITABLE FOR ME AND IT’S NOT MY IMAGINATION AND THAT I’M BEING A “DIFFICULT CLIENT” like this other audiologist told my VR counselor I was.

We deaf musicians need hearing aids that are appropriate for music playback and performance. If you’re interested in learning more about my experience with analogs vs. digitals in a technical sense, with charts for comparison between hearing aids, PM your address, and I can send all that to you shortly.

You have GOT to understand that the day that I can no longer find analog hearing aids, black market or not, is the day that I hang up my music career and never wear hearing aids again, until stem cell therapy becomes possible, and I may not live to see it happen.

That’s very interesting. If you look at the output graphs of the Sebo HD and Agil, they have a relatively flat response up until 1kHz or so. This reminds me of one of Villchur’s papers where he stated the normal human ear has a flat frequency response up until the 2700Hz bump of the ear canal and that hearing aids should replicate this for a more natural sound.

Also, I didn’t notice this before, but the Sebo HD 16 is actually a 20-bit analog-to-digital conversion (120dB dynamic range) with a 32kHz sampling rate, in addition to the wide 14kHz frequency range. Not quite the sampling interval of CD’s/DVD’s, but it should have no peak input limiting issues. It also has 111 channels to do its mojo on. I can’t imagine why anyone at the non-profound level would not choose this aid over anything else currently on the market (I have no idea of the cost).

Sadly, even the Oticon Chili is not powerful enough. Out of everything I’ve researched so far, the only super/ultra power aid that stands out (hardware wise) from the pack at this time is Sonic Innovation’s Endura 12 as it has a frequency range of 100-6000, similar to the Oticon Chili and Widex Super 440.

Question: Would not setting the compression ratio to 1.0 only on <= 1kHz bands help replicate the dual linear/WDRC feature of the Agil?

MG

Technically, no other hearing aid has this feature, and it would be impossible to duplicate this. However, you are on the right path. Linear amplification and compression don’t have to duke it out in the ring.

What I would recommend for you is to try a product like the Siemens Nitro SP BTE. The programming is such that you can do ANYTHING with it. What you want to do is set the compression kneepoints high, like over 60dB and then apply a compression ratio so that what happens is it performs linearly until your kneepoint and then compression is applied in the upper regions until you get to your output limiter.

Siemens really and truly are one of the few manufacuters that let you play with everything. This really makes the unexperienced programmer sweat bullets, because there is too much to go wrong.

I never dreamed that such a person would bother to ask us why we’re not buying digital hearing aids, right here on a hearing aid forum. That has created the red-hot neon elephant that nobody can possibly miss - you’d have to be dead to miss it!

It is very simple. Have you ever tried any of these things on in a test? Do have ANY idea how horrible they sound? Especially the power aid category for 110dB-plus losses?

This is what I suspect… Digitals in the power aid category have been foisted upon the unsuspecting public who have no idea of what things are supposed to sound like, for money, and because the makers simply want to play with digital technology for the sake of digital technology without regard for sound quality.

I know so because while I am in the profoundly deaf category, and have been since a baby, my auditory cortex is very highly developed. I am a musician. I know what a bass guitar amplifier is supposed to sound like because I can hear it unaided (this is the part of my hearing curve that is least affected by my loss, testing about 75 dB at 125 Hz and possibly down to 65-70 dB at 60 and 32 Hz (we would be feeling the fundamentals at this point)), and I have stood in front of amps at work concerts loud enough to hear the amplifiers to the point that I can confirm that yes, the analogs are pretty much playing back what I hear coming through the amps unaided. SO I KNOW THAT DIGITALS ARE NOT SUITABLE FOR ME AND IT’S NOT MY IMAGINATION AND THAT I’M BEING A “DIFFICULT CLIENT” like this other audiologist told my VR counselor I was.

We deaf musicians need hearing aids that are appropriate for music playback and performance. If you’re interested in learning more about my experience with analogs vs. digitals in a technical sense, with charts for comparison between hearing aids, PM your address, and I can send all that to you shortly.

You have GOT to understand that the day that I can no longer find analog hearing aids, black market or not, is the day that I hang up my music career and never wear hearing aids again, until stem cell therapy becomes possible, and I may not live to see it happen.

Deafdrummer, thank you for your addition to this thread.

I have a somewhat curious question for you. Why are you using a hearing aid while drumming instead of some form of In-Ear monitor system? This would vastly expand your perception of dynamic range and feeling of all music. If you are feeling somewhat isolated by wearing in-ear monitors, I would advise the secondary use of a ‘butt-kicker’ which is a low frequency driver that is mounted to the drummers stool and allows low frequencies to be felt through your skeletal frame.

I don’t disagree with you that there are a vast number of transitional issues from analog to digitals… especially with the severe to profound hearing loss community. But that’s why I am here asking this very question to those who would like to share. There are ways to work around your needs for sound, even with digital hearing aids.

Probably, digital has been around long enough and has proved to be so suprerior to analogue that there many people left who like analogue. I did, and I some trouble getting used to digital, but even as I missed the rich sound, I can’t deny that I could hear (comrehend) better with the digital.

I have a music program which, while not linear, has no compression. Sound exactly how I remember analogue.

You appear to be moderately or severely deaf. My curve looks like this.

I can understand people with the analogs, to the point that I can tell you 1) if that is a man or a woman making the intercom page, 2) who is speaking (if the voice is distinct enough for me), and 3) what is being said if it’s a simple page like “camping line one, camping line one” or “action sports, you have a call on line two, line two.”

With the digitals, I cannot hear any of this. In FACT, the power digitals I wore for a while had even narrower frequency ranges (I could not hear the bicycle sensors (no more than 8 feet away), the cash register tag sensors and security chains (no more than five feet away) for expensive clothing). I gave up wearing the digitals after two months. With the analogs, I could hear the bicycle sensors at the door more than 50 feet away, clearly, the tag registers about 30 feet away, and the security chains about 10-15 feet away (these are higher frequency than the others).

I had trouble understanding what people were saying in front of me, even my coworkers whom I’ve worked with for over 5 years at the time! Never have I experienced anything like this when I went from old analogs to new analogs years ago. It was always clearer, better frequency response, like hearing the water splash up into the wheel wells of the car and hearing the difference between a dry papertowel wiping the countertop and a wet one. Or hearing parts of songs that I didn’t know were there before.

I have a somewhat curious question for you. Why are you using a hearing aid while drumming instead of some form of In-Ear monitor system?

This would vastly expand your perception of dynamic range and feeling of all music. If you are feeling somewhat isolated by wearing in-ear monitors, I would advise the secondary use of a ‘butt-kicker’ which is a low frequency driver that is mounted to the drummers stool and allows low frequencies to be felt through your skeletal frame.

I don’t disagree with you that there are a vast number of transitional issues from analog to digitals… especially with the severe to profound hearing loss community. But that’s why I am here asking this very question to those who would like to share. There are ways to work around your needs for sound, even with digital hearing aids.

Because I am behind in technology in this regard. Please see my second post (#194 in this thread), and there is my audiogram curve. I have one person who is supposed to be looking into creating something like a hearing aid that you wear on your body and uses common stereo components including a mixer board, equalizer, in-ear monitors, and headphone amplifier to boost what comes out of the in-ear monitor receiver. He has been blowing me off, though. I have no way of verifying whether this is indeed possible for me. I don’t know what the capability of the in-ear monitors are, since I can’t find dB specs on them. I’d gladly stuff all this into a backpack and wear it all day on my back at work, if need be. Can you verify that this will work for me?

one day energizer battery change their battery and now the whole sound change

Any chance that was due to the mercury-free shift? Energizer has been mercury-free since 2008. The size seems to have been reduced as well.

Back in the day with analog, I always noticed a dramatic difference in fidelity between Energizer pull-tab zinc-air and the other brands which were almost always tabless, mercury-oxide. To the point I absolutely refused to use any other brand/style. If I had tried Rayovac zinc-air, I certainly wasn’t impressed vs Energizer.

Now, with all hearing aid batteries in the U.S. forced to be mercury-free due to the government, I question if there are fidelity differences among all of the various brands of zinc-air and vs previous mercury-containing zinc-air.

Has anyone done any fidelity comparisons with these variables in mind?

I know so because while I am in the profoundly deaf category, and have been since a baby, my auditory cortex is very highly developed. I am a musician. I know what a bass guitar amplifier is supposed to sound like because I can hear it unaided (this is the part of my hearing curve that is least affected by my loss, testing about 75 dB at 125 Hz and

Speaking of neon elephants in the room, do you realize how ridiculous the above statement is? If you like the sound of analogs then fine, but sorry to say the only parallel I can think of your assessment of sound being natural or accurate is Stevie Wonders opinion on art!